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Title: Lilies of Life
Date of first publication: 1945
Author: Malcolm Jameson (1891-1945)
Date first posted: Apr. 27, 2022
Date last updated: Apr. 27, 2022
Faded Page eBook #20220469

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines

This file was produced from images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries.




[Source: Astounding Science Fiction, February 1945]




Lilies

of

Life

by MALCOLM JAMESON

_There was a disease on Venus, and the natives seemed to have a cure.
But the symbiosis involved was madder even than the usual madness of
Venus' life-cycles--_



The test tube dropped to the floor with a crash.  A wisp of acrid
fume trailed up from it.

Parks, ignoring it and gripping the edge of the table, moaned,
"Something's happened to my schedule--this isn't due for an hour
yet--"

He broke off, shivering.

Maxwell looked sharply at him from where he sat, and then glanced at
the clock.  It was only two.  Three o'clock was when their next shots
were due.  But there was no doubt that Parks was working himself into
a seizure.  Already his hands were twitching and jumping
convulsively, and the telltale tics of the deadly Venusian swamp
jitters were commencing to go to work.  Parks' face was no longer his
own, but a travesty of a human countenance--a wildly leering,
alternately staring and squinting mask of agony.

Maxwell rose and pushed back his chair with a sigh.  If Parks was
going that way, so soon would he.  Unhurriedly he walked to the
medicine cabinet and took out two shiny syringes.  He filled them
both from their supply of ampules.  Paracobrine was not much good,
but it was the best men knew.  Then he laid them by the "wailing
wall"--an iron railing firmly secured to heavy stanchions--and went
to where the now whimpering Parks huddled on his stool.

"Come on, old man," he said gently, "let's get it over with."

Parks allowed himself to be led to the place and long practice did
the rest.  By the time Maxwell had the needle in and the plunger
thrust home Parks was gripping the rail as if he meant to squeeze it
flat.  Maxwell took a deep breath.  It was his turn.  He rolled up
his sleeve and forced the amber liquid into his own veins.

For five interminable minutes the two men clung there, writhing and
sobbing as the fiery stuff coursed through their bodies--molten iron,
searing acid, soul-destroying agony.  And then it passed.  Fingers
relaxed their deathlike hold, muscles untensed, and their gasping
again became breathing.

"I ... won't ... go ... through ... this ... again--" began Parks
through clenched teeth, "I--"

"Oh, yes you will," said Maxwell grimly "We always say that ...
everybody says it ... but still we go on.  You know the alternatives,
don't you?"

"I know them," said Parks, dully.  Without paracobrine the jitters
became a permanent condition, not a recurrent one, and one that ended
necessarily in madness.  The other course was the rope, or the jump
from a high place, or a swifter poison.

"All right, let's get back to work then.  What was in that tube?"

"Experiment eleven-o-four.  It doesn't matter now.  I used the last
of the snooker bark.  We haven't the stuff to duplicate it with.  Not
unless Hoskins smuggles in another supply."

"Forget it then.  Let's have a look in the ward.  Maybe
eleven-o-three did the trick."

Parks followed silently, gradually pulling himself back into his
normal self.  Next time he would know to advance the clock.
Paracobrine was no fun, but it was less hard to take in a calm mood
than after the attack had begun.

The ward brought the usual disappointment.  The monkey in the victim
cage was gibbering hideously in his last convulsions.  Within a
minute it would be as dead as the limp piles of inoculated guinea
pigs in the pens beyond.  The last try at the formula had not worked.
Two thirds of the human race would have to go on suffering for
awhile, for a better answer to the swamp jitters than paracobrine was
not yet.

Maxwell looked at the other cages.  There were still some monkeys and
guinea pigs, and there were a few other combinations yet to try.  Men
in vital research must be resilient.  A thousand or so failures was
nothing.  It is a part of the business.

"I think," he started to say, "that we had best--"

"I'll get the door," Parks interrupted, as a discreet tapping broke
in on them.  "Sounds like Hoskins."


It was Hoskins, Hoskins the interplanetary smuggler.  He carried a
heavy satchel and wore a sour grin.

"Bad news, fellows," he said, setting down his bag.  "No more stuff
out of Venus from now on.  They've trebled the offplanet patrol and
tightened up on port inspection.  Tony was pinched, and his ship and
the stuff for you with it.  They threw him in the clink, of course,
and burned the cargo.  That means you won't get any more snooker
bark, or gizzle bugs, twangi-twangi melons or any other of that
stuff.  Shan Dhee has chucked his job, which leaves me without a
buyer.  I'm going out of business.  Sorry."

"There's _nothing_ for us?" asked Parks, aghast.  He clung fiercely
to his theory that the specific for the jitters would be found only
in some organic product of Venus, where the disease originated.  It
would be there, if anywhere, that the virus' natural enemies would
have evolved.  But lately other Venusian maladies had been turning up
and the quarantine authorities must have ordered a stricter embargo.
Without smuggled organics, his and Maxwell's hands would be tied.

"I've got this stuff," said Hoskins, opening the bag.  "It's not the
sort you usually order, but I happen to have it on hand and want to
close it out.  It's loot Shan Dhee got out of a Tombov temple he once
robbed.  It ought to go to a museum, but the stuff's hot and they ask
too many questions.  Could you use it?"

He dug into the bag and came up with a figurine.  It was a piece of
the curious coffee-colored semi-jade regarded as a sacred stone by
the savage Tombovs, and, considered as Tombov work, was
extraordinarily finely executed.  Its subject was a rotund, jolly old
Tombov godlet, sitting comfortably on a throne with his pudgy hands
clasped across his belly.  About his neck hung a rope of what
appeared to be large pearls, and he was crowned with a chaplet of
swamp lilies.  Lily plants grew all about the throne, and there the
jade had been cunningly colored green by the application of a kind of
lacquer--the pale-yellow lilies being similarly tinted.

"Shan Dhee says it is the Tombov God of Health, and the temple was
the big one in Angra Swamp where the Angra tribes hold their orgies."

"Ugh!" shuddered Parks.  Those who had seen them reported the Tombov
ritual was not a pretty thing to watch.  "No, it's no good to us."

"I don't know," said Maxwell, slowly.  "God of Health, you say?
Mm-m.  Come to think of it, most Tombovs are immune to the jitters,
or were until our pioneers went there.  Maybe we ought to study it.
How much?"

"Nothing, to you," said Hoskins.  "You've been good customers.  Take
it for cumshaw.  But I'll have to ask money for these."

He dug again into the bag and came out with a double handful of
beautiful, iridescent spherelets.  They were each about the size of a
golf ball, and looked for all the world like so many soap
bubbles--thin, fragile, and shimmering.  Yet when Maxwell examined
one he found it to be exceedingly hard, though almost weightless, and
it appeared to be made of the toughest imaginable crystal.

"What are they?"

"Gems, I guess," shrugged Hoskins.  "They came out of the temple,
too.  Shan Dhee said they hung around the neck of the big idol like a
necklace--roped together with wisps of grass.  See, the little idol
wears a replica of it."

Maxwell considered the jewels, frowning.  Hoskins added that the
price would be a thousand for the lot.  That was a lot of money, but
what was money to men doomed to a lingering, fearful death?  The
baubles were somehow linked to the Tombov health rites, and the wild
Tombov--though a filthy beast--was notoriously healthy.  It was only
the civilized ones who withered and died.  It was doubtful that the
gems themselves had any therapeutic value, but they came out of a
temple.  Therefore they were symbolic of something or other, a
possible clue to the real secret.

Maxwell hauled a drawer open and swept the glistening spheres into it.

"Make out a check, Parks.  I'm going to play a hunch."


Parks, still dazed from his premature seizure, nodded dumbly.  And
after Hoskins had gone, they took out the spheres again and huddled
over them.  Then they divided up the work and went at it.

Tests were applied, with results that were largely negative.  The
iridescent balls were acid-proof, shatter-proof, and exceedingly
hard.  But Maxwell managed to saw one in half, and found it empty,
though as the saw first bit through the thin shell there was a sharp
hissing as trapped inner gases escaped into the room.  Parks was
quick to catch a sample of the foul-smelling stuff, only to be
baffled by the analysis.  The organic gases of Venus have most
complex molecular structures.

"Hey," yelled Maxwell, a little later, taking his eye away from the
microscope.  "I have some of that sawdust here.  It isn't crystalline
at all.  It's definitely a cellular structure.  These balls are
certainly not minerals, but they are not plant or animal tissue
either--not as we know them.  They're just--"

"just Venusian," Parks completed for him, sighing.  Anything that
lived on Venus was a headache to the investigator.  There was no
perceptible borderline between flora and fauna, and there were times
when both encroached into the mineral zone.  Venusian life cycles
made those of such devious transformations as the human tapeworm on
Earth seem as bleakly simple as the reproductive processes of the
amoeba.  Parks knew of, to name just one, a sort of aquatic ant that
was fertilized by clinging to the skin of eels, and which then
crawled ashore and laid its eggs, the eggs subsequently growing up
into masses of moss.  Weird, featherless birds ate that moss and
developed intestinal parasites.  Those, upon deserting their host,
became crawling ants, sprouted wings, and then took off for the
ocean.  It was merely the usual Venusian complicated symbiotic
set-up; the ants being somehow necessary to the survival of the eels,
and in their later forms to the birds, both as food and as digestive
enzymes.  Scientists who attempted to follow through lost themselves
in a maze of yet other ramifications.

Maxwell and Parks stared at one another.

"There's only one thing to do," said Maxwell.  "Hoskins can't bring
any more stuff to us, we'll have to go to it.  I want to know why
wild Tombovs don't have jitters, and why lilies are sacred to them,
and what these things are.  We're going to Venus."

Their arrival at Port Angra was not a cheerful occasion.  Their arms
and legs were puffed and aching from scores of prophylactic shots.
Moreover, they had had to sign away most of their civil rights.
Despite all precautions, white men rarely could remain more than
three months on Venus without picking up one or more virulent
infections, any of which would prevent his ever returning to sanitary
Earth.  People therefore went there at their own risk, absolving the
government and all others concerned in advance.

There was also nothing reassuring about their fellow passengers.  A
few were desperate scientists like themselves, stragglers in the
procession that had been going by for years.  Others were
missionaries, gone to relieve brothers whose three months were about
up.  For similar reasons there were relief quarantine enforcement
officers along, and representatives of the Radioactive Syndicate,
come to take their turn at keeping the uranium mines going.  Most
regarded their assignments with unalloyed distaste.

They came down in the inevitable sticky, yellow, hot mist, and landed
in a clearing made in a lush jungle.  Awaiting them was a pathetic
sight--rows and rows of grounded palanquins wearing the weathered and
mildewing white and red insignia of the Red Cross.  In litters lay
the men they were coming to relieve, mere wrecks of what they had
been a few short weeks before.  For not a few of them their coming to
the port was no more than a hopeless gesture.  Whether they were
accepted for the passage home would depend upon the doctors.

"This is some place," growled Parks.

"When the jitters hit you again," reminded Maxwell grimly, "it won't
matter.  Any place you happen to be in will be that."

He studied the ranks of tamed Tombovs standing patiently beside the
grounded chairs.  They were the bearers, the helots of this hole.
They stood gaunt and shivering, for they were sick men too, sicker
even than the whites.  It was thought profitable to keep Earthmen
alive by periodic doses of paracobrine, but a waste of good drugs
when it came to natives.  The swamps were full of them, and the
promise of tobacco--the one non-native commodity valued by the
savages--always filled up the ranks again.  As Maxwell looked, one of
the chair bearers jerked into violent convulsions and fell writhing
and howling to the muddy ground.  No one noticed.  It was too
routine.  Tomorrow, maybe, the scavengers would attend to it.

The Tombov was remarkably humanoid, grotesquely so, more so than the
great apes of Earth.  The salient difference was in the feet, huge
splayed pedals that served as mudshoes, distributing the body weight
over a larger area so that the Tombov could walk safely on the thin
crust that topped the viscous mire of the swamplands.  They were
ducklike feet, mostly membrane spread between long tapering toes.

The port captain came up and called litters for the new arrivals, one
each for the men, and additional ones for their equipment.  Then he
barked out an order in the harsh Tombov tongue and the bearers picked
up their loads and went on splashing away.

Despite the poor visibility, Maxwell found it an interesting ride.
There was a feeling of luxuriousness in being carried along over
impossibly sloppy ground on the bare shoulders of a half dozen
jogging slaves.  And he was interested and at the same time appalled
at the riot of vegetation he glimpsed on all sides.  There was an
infinitude of species of every kind of living thing, an overwhelming
field for scientific study.  With human mortality rates what they
were, man would probably never know much about Venusian life forms.
For the animals, if they were animals, that peered out from time to
time, were as weird and incredible as the fantastic flowering lianas,
smoking bushes, and trees that gave off metallic, cracked-bell
clanking sounds.

His momentary sense of well being abruptly departed from him as their
caravan hove into a clearing and trotted past a low mud wall.  Over
the group of buildings beyond the wall flew the drab banner of the
U.M.--United Missions.  He saw the corrals into which newly arrived
Tombovs were being herded, preparatory to their being "processed" for
the slave market.  For since Earth men could not work and survive in
that vile climate, they had to have natives as the beasts of burden.
It was natives who dug the uranium, who did the building, and the
hauling.  And heathen Tombovs would not do.  They were too
intractable.

Maxwell thought cynically on the conversion statistics, of the
thousands run through the salvation mills each year.  It was not
basically an evangelical proposition.  It was an economic necessity.
For all Earthmen, whatever their faith, agreed on one point--the
Tombov in the raw was a lazy, lascivious, irresponsible rascal.  The
wild native was a chronic liar, a congenital thief, and what
displeased him he was prone to kill out of hand, and his means of
doing it were rarely nice.  He saw no point in working, for natural
food was on every hand.  He was tough; therefore physical punishment
meant nothing.  His philosophy was virtually nil, so he was deaf to
abstract appeal.  In short, to be useful, he _had_ to be
Christianized.


A turn of the road put the mission behind, and its hateful
appendage--the labor mart.  Ahead were the first straggling huts of
Agra.  They passed the inevitable dispensary, with its white-coated
attendants and wailing wall.  Then they stopped at a low building
beyond whose sign read:

Bureau of Research Co-ordination.


The doctor in charge was a haggard, sallow man with woebegone eyes.
His hopeless expression did not change while Maxwell was outlining
his theory.  When he stopped the doctor shook his head.

"A chimera," he said, "a waste of work.  Others have come to Venus
with the notion that it was something the Tombovs ate or drank that
made them immune to jitters.  Every item of their diet has been
analyzed many times, even the foul fen air they breathe.  The results
were always negative.  Nor is there any appreciable difference
between Tombov blood types and ours, or their vitamin reaction.  We
think now that the so-called Tombov immunity is due to nothing more
mysterious than natural selection.  The ones now in the swamps are
descendants of those who simply could not be killed by the disease,
and therefore have great resistance."

"Nonsense," said Maxwell, nettled by the negativeness of the man.
"What becomes of their natural resistance when they are converted?
Baptism has no effects on antibodies.  Did it ever occur to you that
there may be something they do at their secret rites which makes the
difference?"

"Religion," said the doctor, stiffly, "is a subject I never discuss,
and the less said about the abominable rites of the swamp savages the
better.  I assure you, sir, if you knew the Tombov as well as we here
do--"

Maxwell snorted and turned away.

"Let's go, Parks.  It's the 'old China hand' story all over again.
When a scientist lets himself be blinded by prejudice he isn't a
scientist any more."

At the dispensary they asked the whereabouts of Hoskins' former
scout, Shan Dhee.  According to Hoskins, Shan Dhee was a convert who
backslid after living with the whites awhile and turned native again.
It was because he promptly contracted the jitters and had sense
enough to run away.  The result of being apostate from both camps was
that he became a sort of pariah, tolerated, but distrusted by both
races.  Yet he served well as a go-between because he was the one
heathen Tombov who knew the ways of Earthmen and spoke their
language, though Hoskins warned it would be in a variety of code.

"Shan Dhee?" said the interne, lifting an eyebrow in surprise that a
respectable person should inquire about one so shifty and
disreputable.  "Why, in jail, probably.  If not, you'll find him
hanging around one of the dives down at the Edge, loaded to the gills
with zankra.  Take my advice and have a patrolman go along, if you
have to see him.  When a convert goes bad, he's _bad_."

"Oh, we'll manage," said Maxwell.  The anti-Tombov prejudice seemed
well distributed.  He was still inclined to rely on Hoskins'
recommendation.


The zankra joint was not a savory place.  It was dark and dirty, and
very, very smelly.  Its patrons, white men who couldn't stand the
gaff and had been barred from going home by reason of their
condition, lay all about on dirty mats.  They were dead to the world,
even if their muscles did occasionally knot up in spasmodic
twitchings.  This was the way they chose to ease their doom--they had
gone the zankra route.  For zankra, though not a cure for anything,
brought blissful anaesthesia, being as it was a natural elixir--a
blend of protomezyl alcohol and a number of potent alkaloids.  It was
cheap, too, since the gourds of which it was the juice could be had
for a copper coin or so.  A gourd of it was just being broached as
Maxwell and Parks walked in.  They saw a native squat by the door and
jab a hole in the fruit so he could insert a sucking quill.

"We're Mr. Hoskins' friends," Maxwell said to him.  "Where can we
find Shan Dhee?"

The Tombov studied him shiftily.  There was some hesitation, and then,

"Me Shan Dhee."

Maxwell had also been studying him.  He was gratified to note that
the fellow seemed to be magnificently healthy.  There was none of the
residual tremor that persists even after paracobrine shots.  Yet Shan
Dhee's shoulders and arms bore mute testimony that he had been a
jitters' victim at one time.  They were covered with the scars of
self-inflicted bites, usually a sure sign of an untreated case.  The
scars were very old, and confirmed in a way what Maxwell wanted to
believe.  The man had evidently been cured--a thing believed to be
impossible.  But how?  By his reversion to his former pagan practices?

Shan Dhee turned out to be a poor subject.  It was bad enough that he
spoke the barbarous pidgin brought by the first missionaries, but he
was also suspicious, stubborn, and evasive.  By Maxwell's questions
Shan Dhee at once divined that Maxwell knew that he had once robbed a
temple, and he knew that if other Tombovs ever found that out he was
sure to die horribly.

"No know what lily flower good for," he would say, averting his eyes.
"Tombov no eat.  Tombov wear.  Lily flower no good Earth-fellow.
Kankilona come out of lily flower.  Earth fellow kankilona no like.
Earth fellow priestfellow say kankilona horres ... horre_sn_ous
monster.  Earth fellow priestfellow wantchee kill all kankilona.
Kankilona die, Tombov die.  Die no good for Tombov.  More better
Earth-fellow no see kankilona."

That was that.  No amount of questioning could elucidate more.  They
had to guess at what sort of "horrendous monster" a kankilona might
be.  On Venus it could be anything from an ambulatory flytrap to a
firebreathing dragon.  All that was clear was that there was a
relation between the lilies and the monsters, that the missionaries
did not approve of them, and that the monsters were somehow necessary
to Tombov well being.

Questions as to the iridescent, gas-filled spheres brought little
that was comprehensible, though much later it did come to have
meaning.  Shan Dhee tried desperately to duck the question, for
evidently he had lied about them to Hoskins.

"Littily shiny balls no gems," he confessed at last.  "Littily shiny
ball no good at all.  Littily shiny ball one day pretty ... six,
eight day more ... no more littily shiny ball.  All gone.  Maybeso
littily shiny ball papa-papa-fellow kankilona."

"He's lying," said Parks.  "We've got eighteen of 'em at home in our
vault.  We studied 'em a lot longer than a week, and none of them
vanished.  I'd call 'em pretty permanent."

Shan Dhee refused to amplify.  Maxwell noted the hinted link to the
mysterious kankilona, but let it go and went straight to the purpose
of his call.  Would Shan Dhee fix it so they could attend a Tombov
orgy?

Shan Dhee's reaction was close to terror.  Tombov temples were
strictly tabu to Earthmen at all times.  They were even tabu to
Tombovs, including the priesthood, except during the days of actual
festival.  The Tombovs would hardly dare slaughter the Earthmen if
they were found desecrating the place--the Tombovs had learned that
hard lesson long before--but what they would do to Shan Dhee was too
dreadful to think about.  Shan Dhee would steal, smuggle, even murder
for them--if tobacco enough was to be had--but not that.

"Don't Tombov priests like tobacco, too?" Maxwell asked, softly.

It was a lucky question.  It rang the bell.  Shan Dhee reconsidered.
He sipped zankra and made calculations on his lingers.  In the end he
yielded.

"Maybeso can do," he admitted, uneasily, "Maybeso Tombov
priest-fellow letchee Shan Dhee hidum Earthfellow godhouse-side, but
priestfellow no likee Earthfellow in Tombov godhouse.  Earthfellow no
likee see Tombov catchee kankilona.  Earthfellow get sick.
Earthfellow pukum.  Earthfellow get mad.  Earthfellow smashee Tombov
god-house.  Earthfellow in godhouse no good.  More better Earthfellow
hidee outside."

Both investigators promised faithfully they would watch unseen.  They
would be the soul of discretion.  And they would pay any reasonable
price.  They were not scoffers or reformers.  They wanted only to
know the secret of Tombov health.  Shan Dhee relaxed.  He even
grinned a crooked grin.

"Tombov priestfellow more better Earthfellow priestfellow.  Tombov
wantchee long life now, swampside.  Tombov no wantchee long life
_bimebye_, Heavenside.  Heavenside no good.  Too far, Swampside more
better."

Parks and Maxwell smiled.  After all, they couldn't blame the poor
devil.  How could the warped missionary doctrine preached them be any
solace for hard labor and suffering?  Better good health now, and let
them take their chances on Heaven.  So they argued no further, but
totted up the quantities of tobacco Chan Dhee said would be required.

It took three weeks of dreary slogging over slimy mud, sometimes
proceeding by dugout canoe, before they came to the place of the
Festival of Long Life.  Shan Dhee showed them the markers that set
off the sacred areas.  Until they were removed three days later it
was forbidden for ordinary Tombovs to pass them.  But Shan Dhee shot
the clumsy craft ahead.  His coming had been arranged.  He directed
the canoe on past the tripods of saplings with their warning plumed
skulls.  The sluggish lagoon narrowed.  Presently they came in
between two lily fields.  Shan Dhee explained that there were only a
few places where such lilies grew and that the penalty for taking one
off holy ground was death.

Maxwell studied the plants with interest, but saw little to
distinguish them from the Terran variety except their great size and
yellow color.  And then he was startled to see monstrous hairy
creatures crawling around among them.  Far a long time he got only
glimpses, and then he saw one entire.  It was a sort of giant
tarantula--a horror of mottled silky hair hanging from a bulbous,
palpitating body as large as a basketball.  There seemed to be a
score of arching legs, each hairy and clawed at the tip.  There were
ugly, knifelike fangs, too, from which a greenish poison drooled.  A
cluster of luminous eyes were set above them, glaring venomously in
shifting reds and violets.

"Kankilona," said Shan Dhee.

Parks shuddered.  It was upsetting even to look on one.  Had Shan
Dhee said that the Tombovs _ate_ them?

The lagoon shoaled and narrowed.  In a moment Shan Dhee drove the
dugout nose up onto a muddy bank.  It was the island hummock of the
temple grounds.  They climbed out and dragged the canoe into the
underbrush and hid it under broad leaves.  Then they gathered up
their baggage and went up onto the hummock.

It was a glade surrounded by heavy cypress, and under the trees were
hundreds of little huts.  In the distance stood the temple--an
astonishing structure of gray atone, astonishing because the nearest
solid ground was more than a hundred miles away.  Only stubborn
devotion could have carried those massive stones to where they were.
But the temple's great portal was closed and barred.  The whole place
was deserted.

Shan Dhee disregarded everything until he could build their hiding
place.  It was a two-roomed hut he made for them, considerably apart
from any other.  As a tolerated outcast Shan Dhee said he was
permitted to attend the festival, but he must keep his distance from
the truly faithful.  As it happened, his status was most convenient,
for the two Earthmen could live in the rear, watching the show
through peepholes, while Shan Dhee sat stolidly in the doorway, sure
that no wild Tombov would venture near an untouchable.  Shan Dhee
said they could see all there was to see from there until the night
of the culmination of the revels.  By then the Tombovs would be blind
drunk and would not notice if they were being spied on from the
darkness outside the temple door.

Maxwell and Parks laid out their gear.  There were their food pellets
and their store of tobacco twists that must be given to the priests.
There was also their scientific paraphernalia--beakers and test tubes
and reaction chemicals, and their all-purpose spectrographic camera.
But the most essential item was their supply of precious paracobrine,
for Parks was slipping fast, and needed shots at hourly intervals.
They stowed that safely, and settled down to wait.

The subsequent week was not especially instructive, nor was it
entertaining.  During the first days the Tombovs began straggling in,
filthy with swamp mud encrusted on them.  They brought their women
and children with them, and a tremendous number of zankra gourds.
Each family settled into its own hut, and then proceeded to the
tribal reunion.  The affair was much like barbaric gatherings
anywhere in the Solar System--attended by the monotonous banging on
tom-toms; by wild, uninhibited dancing; by gorgings with food and
drink.  There were scenes of reckless drunkenness, but until the
beginning of the fifth day it was essentially a social gathering.  It
was not until the fifth day that the priests showed up.

The activities thereafter took on a different tinge.  No longer did
the Tombov braves lie around in drunken stupor until midafternoon.
They were put to work.  And their women were put to work.

They went out into the swamp, paddling along on their splayed, webbed
feet.  The men carried curious nets made of twisted small liana.  The
boys trailed them, bearing roomy cages made of a sort of wicker.  For
the women's part, their job seemed to be the gathering of lilies.
They stripped the plants methodically, taking blooms and leaves
alike, leaving little more than pulpy stubble behind.  It was not
until evening came and the men came back that Maxwell knew what they
had gone for.  They returned triumphantly with scores upon scores of
captured kankilonas, the trapped arachnids ululating horribly in
protest at their restricted movement.  The priests opened the temple
doors long enough to receive the spiders, and then closed them again.


That went on for three days more, but as the swamps were stripped of
their leafy covering and crawling monsters, Maxwell made an
astounding discovery.  For a few minutes one day the sun came
through--a rarity on cloudy Venus--and as it did a miracle seemed to
happen.  The dull mudflats became beds of scintillating fire.  What
he had bought from Hoskins as jewels lay thick everywhere.  They were
as numerous as the dead leaves of fall.  Then the clouds took over
again and the glow died.

"What do you make of it?" asked Parks, who was looking on in wonder.
"Could they be lily seed?"

"Hardly," said Maxwell.  "They are too light and airy.  Seeds have to
sink into the soil to germinate.  Those things won't even sink in
water."

At last the final day of the festival came.  Men and women dressed
themselves in gala garments made from lilies.  There were chaplets
and leis, garlands and leafy headdresses.  And they were drinking
ankra in colossal doses.  All afternoon there was unrestrained
dancing, and toward dark the drunken choruses became a bedlam of
hideous howling.  Then the temple doors were thrown open wide, and
torches lit inside.

"Pretty soon you Hoskins friend-fellow see kankilona feast," remarked
Shan Dhee.  He looked worried, as if repenting the deal.  "No letchee
priestfellow catchee looksee," he warned.  Maxwell and Parks repeated
their promise.

It was near midnight when they decided the worshippers were so drunk
that nothing would matter.  Maxwell and Parks stole out of their hut
and across the glade, being careful not to step on the many Tombovs
who had already passed out.  They stopped close to the great door and
looked in.  The orgy was at its height.  They saw now how the feast
was conducted.  Two acolytes would hand up a squirming kankilona,
stripped of its legs.  The high priest would receive it, and then
defang it with two swift jerks.  The slimy fangs he would hurl into a
basket at the foot of the chief idol; the carcass he would throw to
the yelling celebrants.  There would be a scramble for it.  then a
howl of disappointment as the unlucky ones watched the favored sink
his teeth into the soft venom sac of the mangled tarantula.

Parks gripped Maxwell's arms.

"I ... I've got to go back to the hut," he gasped.

"What's the matter?" asked Maxwell sharply.  "Can't you take it?
We're not squeamish missionaries."

"T-that's not it.  I forgot my shot.  See how I'm jumping?  But you
stick around.  I'll be back in a jiffy."

Maxwell let him go.  It was routine, more or less, and he did not
want to miss any unexpected feature of the rites before him.  He
watched Parks disappear into the dark, and then started to turn his
gaze back at the orgies.

He did not complete the movement.  A surprisingly strong arm
encircled him, and a husky knee entwined and gripped his.  He knew
from the wide flat foot that it was a Tombov that assailed him.  Then
there was a mocking voice in his ear--it was Shan Dhee's voice, and
Shan Dhee was crazy drunk.  His breath stank of zankra, and worse.

"Earthfellow wantchee long life, huh?" he taunted.  "Okeh, okeh.
Earth fellow catchee long life.  Earthfellow catchee kankilona juice."

Maxwell felt himself being bent irresistibly backward to the peals of
the maddened Tombov's maniacal laughter.  A disgusting gob of hairy,
mushy something was slapped down on his face.  He could not get his
breath.  He struggled and tried to cry out.  It was what Shan Dhee
wanted him to do.  His teeth broke the tender membrane of the
kankilona's venom sac.  There was a gush of indescribably nauseating
oily stuff.  It stung his cheeks and shoulders.  Maxwell felt utterly
defiled and ashamed.  He wanted to die then and there.  And then
something happened to him.

In one swift instant all the nausea and revulsion was swept away.  In
its place there was heavenly exhilaration, an exaltation that
exceeded any ecstasy he had ever known.  He was no longer a sick man;
would never be one again.  He was strong, well--a champion among
champions.  Life was wonderful.  It had to be expressed.  Maxwell cut
loose with a war whoop that shook the glade.  Then things went madly
round and round.  Lights flared up and faded.  The howling within the
temple died, dwindling into an infinitude of distance.  After that
Maxwell did not remember.


He awoke in what he thought must be the gray dawn of the morning
after.  He was lying face down in the muck outside the temple door.
He lay very still for a moment, wondering when the inescapable
headache would begin to rack him, for after the heady intoxication he
now faintly remembered, it was unthinkable that there would not be
one--and a super one at that.  But there was no headache.  There was
no foul taste in the mouth.  Maxwell had to admit he felt fine,
which, under the circumstances, was humiliating.  He wondered if he
was altogether sane.  He started to get up, gingerly, expecting to
find himself full of Charlie horses.  There weren't any.  He was fit
as a fiddle.  He quit worrying and arose briskly, but promptly
regretted it.  His head thumped into something, and there was a
crash.  He stood amazed and aghast at what fell.  It was three long
sticks of wood lashed together and tied with a bunch of plumes.  A
skull lay grinning at him from the wreckage.  During the night
someone had erected that dire symbol over him--the warning that he
was tabu--under a curse!

Maxwell shot a glance at the temple.  Its doors were closed and
barred.  It was that way also in the glade.  The huts were empty, the
celebrants gone.  The festival was over.  Now everything was tabu.
Maxwell's wrist watch said it was late afternoon.  He had slept more
than the night.

Then his heart jumped as he belatedly remembered Parks.  Parks said
he would come back.  Where was he?  Had Shan Dhee assaulted him, too?
Maxwell looked around, but there was no sign of him.  He started off
across the glade in great bounding strides.

Before the hut he was brought to an abrupt stop.  Another tabu tripod
stood there.  But there was more besides.  On a stake nearby there
was the grinning newly severed head of a Tombov, and scattered about
the foot of the stake were freshly picked bones--near human bones.
The head was Shan Dhee's head.  It meant that Shan Dhee had
transgressed somehow, and Shan Dhee had paid the penalty.  It was
ominous.  Maxwell feared to think of what he might find inside.


What was inside was bad enough.  Both rooms were a shambles of
smashed possessions.  Most of the scientific equipment was hopelessly
ruined, and food pellets were mixed indiscriminately with spilled
chemicals.  Every scrap of the tobacco was gone.  But far worse, the
whole interior reeked of paracobrine.  Shattered ampules and broken
syringes explained that readily enough.  The looters, Nazilike, had
destroyed what they did not value themselves.

At the moment none of that bothered Maxwell overmuch.  It was Parks
he wanted to find.  And find him he did, half hidden beneath a pile
of torn clothes.  Maxwell uncovered him and knelt beside him, staring
at him in bitter dejection.  He felt like a murderer, for Parks had
never been keen about this wild goose expedition.  It was Maxwell,
who insisted on playing the hunch.  Now Parks' tense face had a
deathly pallor, and the few weak tremors were eloquent of the
complete exhaustion that must follow a night and day of uncontrolled
convulsions.  Parks had been late for his shot, and must have fallen,
out of control.  Maxwell should have foreseen that, and returned with
him.  Now it was too late.  There was no more paracobrine.  By
morning Parks would be dead.

Maxwell sat for minutes, torturing himself.  Then, of a sudden, a
great light dawned on him.  Why, he himself had missed at least two
shots, and he felt fine!  Unbelieving, he stretched out his arm.
There was not so much as the hint of a tremor.  What ... why--

In another instant Maxwell was outside, ransacking abandoned huts.
In a little while it would be deep twilight, and he had no time to
lose.  In the third hut he found a kankilona net.  In another a
broken cage, which he speedily repaired.  Then he set off for the
swamp's edge.

Maxwell quickly discovered that catching wily kankilonas alive was
work that required men in gangs.  The first several he spotted eluded
him.  The fourth one squared off and circled, warily fighting back.
Maxwell was in no mood to quibble.  Did kankilona venom lose its
potency when the spider died?  He couldn't know.  But he knew he had
to have some--of _any_ strength--and quickly.  He hurled his knife
into the monster and watched it die.  Then, lacking any kind of
container, he tore off part of his shirt and dipped it into the
ebbing poison.  He ran back to Parks with that.

"Open your mouth, old man," he coaxed, but there was no response.
Maxwell pried the jaws apart and blocked them.  Then, drop by drop,
he wrung nauseous oil out of the rag.  Parks winced and tried to
avert his head, but he was too weak.  He gulped the stuff down,
perforce.  Maxwell fed it all, then waited.

The reaction was mercifully quick.  Within seconds Parks' almost
imperceptible breathing deepened, and his absent pulse returned.
Slowly the iron-set neck muscles softened, the face relaxed, and
there was a show of warming pink.  In a little while Parks was
sleeping peacefully.  Maxwell examined him carefully from head to
foot.  There were no tremors.  Not any.  Maxwell heaved a big sigh of
relief.  Then he lit a torch.  He had to do something about
retrieving those food pellets.

Miraculous as the newfound remedy was, Parks' convalescence was slow.
Either because he was so far gone in the beginning, or because the
venom was not strictly fresh.  His complete recovery was a matter of
weeks, not hours or days, and in that time Maxwell had the
opportunity to observe many things.

He kept a sharp watch on the swamp.  He wanted to see what happened
to the crystalline spheres, which Shan Dhee had said would vanish
after awhile.  He put on mudshoes and gathered a few and stored them
in the hut.  Then he maintained a vigil at the hummock's edge.

Nothing whatever happened for almost a week, and when it did happen,
it happened at night.  It was by the purest chance that Maxwell
couldn't go to sleep, and walked out into the glade for more air.  It
was then he saw the shimmering violet light that seemed to pervade
the entire swamp area.  It was as if the mudflats were a bed of
smoldering anthracite, dimly lit by flickering bluish flame.  Maxwell
went back to the hut for the torch and mudshoes.  Then he
investigated.

What he discovered was a horde of sluggish crawlers, creatures not
too distantly related to the queer Australian platypus.  Many were
feeding noisily on the lily stubble, but most just lay, as if
entranced, staring at the crystalline spherelets.  It was the light
of their violet eyes that furnished the illumination, a fact that did
not astonish Maxwell.  The majority of Venusian fauna had luminous
eyes.  What did bowl him over was what the light did to the
shimmering balls.  They shrank, and shrank.  They dwindled to mere
pellets, hard, and relatively heavy.  Then they were no more.  There
were only bubbles to mark the spot where they had sunk into the mire.
Maxwell pocketed several of the shrunken balls just before they
disappeared.

The next day he dissected one.  It was now obviously a seed, perhaps
a lily seed.  It was one more curious example of the deviousness of
Nature.  Apparently in its first state it was infertile, and
therefore of a shape and weight which would keep it on the marsh
surface.  Then, perhaps by symbiotic impulse, the platypus creatures
were attracted to it, gazed upon it with their violet rays, and
somehow fertilized it.  Whereupon it planted itself by gravity.

Maxwell followed through on that theory.  That night he went into the
swamp differently armed.  He carried a bundle of dry sticks, and the
spectrographic camera.  He recorded the exact composition of the
violet light, and noted the time it was applied.  Then he marked a
number of the bubbly places with his sticks.  If lilies came up
there, the spheres were lily seeds.

The next day he reversed his camera, making it a projector.  He
duplicated the platyputian light and shed it on the crystalline balls
he had retrieved first.  They did shrink into seed.  He had at least
one bit of positive proof.  Then he planted them at a marked spot.


Slowly Parks improved.  For several days Maxwell sought and found
more spiders, but each day they grew scarcer.  There came a day when
there were none at all.  The festival apparently had been timed to
coincide with their greatest density.  When would the new crop of
them come, and from where?  Maxwell thought on that, and began the
study of the small pile of carcasses piled outside the hut.  He hoped
to learn something about the reproduction methods of the kankilona.

All but one of his dissections were negative.  In that one he found
an object that definitely jolted him.  It was obviously an egg.  But
the kankilona egg was one of those crystalline balls!  He now had one
more link in its life cycle.  He would have to wait for the rest of
it to develop.

He had to wait for another reason.  Parks was gaining, but he would
not be able to travel under his own steam for some time to come.  On
the way back they would not have the assistance of Shan Dhee.
Maxwell wondered whether the angry priests had left them the canoe.
He dashed off worriedly to investigate.

The dugout was safe where they had left it.  Maxwell eased it into
the water and tried it out.  And while he was learning the trick of
handling it, he paddled it a way down the lagoon.  He backed water
vigorously as he neared the tripod tabu signs that marked the
boundary of the lily reservation.  Just beyond there was an
encampment of Tombov braves.  It was a troubling discovery.

But a moment later he was a little bit relieved.  A Tombov had
spotted him just as he sighted them, and for a long minute both men
stared at each other.  Other Tombovs got up and looked, stolidly
inexpressive.  They made no outcry or hostile gesture, and as Maxwell
turned the dugout about and headed back toward the temple clearing,
the savages sat down again, as if the incident was closed.

It was Parks who guessed the purpose of the outpost.  He was strong
enough to talk, then, and was following Maxwell's theories with great
interest.

"This kankilona business is the Tombov's big secret.  They know by
now how selfish the Earthman is, and how ruthlessly and wastefully he
exploits.  They don't want to kill us--if they had, they would have
done it the night they left.  But they are not going to let us get
back to Angra with a live spider, or its egg, or any other thing they
value.  If we leave here alive, it will have to be barehanded."

"I get it," said Maxwell, gloomily.  "They know, as you and I do,
that if our race learned about spider venom, swarms of humans would
invade these swamps and exterminate the genus in a single season.
There just aren't enough kankilona.  They would go the way of the
bison and the dodo.  And then we would be in a fix."

"Right," agreed Parks.  "What we ought to do of course, is analyze
that poison and see what ingredient makes it work.  But our stuff is
smashed.  If we can't take back a specimen of it, all this has gone
for nothing."

"We'll see," said Maxwell.

Meantime lily plants were sprouting where the ball-seeds had sunk.
Soon the plants would be maturing.  Then it would be time for another
festival.  They wanted to leave before that came, and they had to
leave for a still more urgent reason.  If they did not get back to
Angra soon, their stay would overstretch the six-months time limit.
Nothing would convince stupid quarantine officials that they weren't
crawling with every variety of Venusian virus.

The first lilies were well in bloom the day they climbed into the
dugout for the trip back.  Maxwell shunted the canoe over close to a
stand of the flowers, and plucked one.  It was a very curious
blossom, lacking either stamen or pistil.  It was a sexless plant.
But he observed a fatty swelling in one of the lush petals.  He slit
it open and laid bare a small tumor.  He cut into that.  Dozens of
tiny black objects scattered out, like ants from a disturbed hill.
They were baby kankilona!

"Well, that's that," said Maxwell, dropping the torn lily into the
lagoon.  "Now we have the whole story.  Lilies beget spiders, spiders
lay eggs, friend platypus comes along and the egg becomes a lily
seed.  That is where we came in."

"And," supplemented Parks, "kankilonas are health-giving, so _after_
they have laid their eggs, the Tombovs come and eat them.  The
so-called temple jewels, I suppose, are simply a reserve seed crop in
case of a drought."

"Drought on Venus," laughed Maxwell.  "You're crazy."  But he got the
idea.

At the edge of the lily swamp the Tombovs looked them over.  They
were grave and silent, and offered no violence, but they were
thorough.  Their search of the boat revealed no contraband.  A surly
chieftain waved in the general direction of Angra.  Maxwell dipped
his paddle in and thrust the dugout ahead.

"It's tough," remarked Parks, regretfully, "but at least you and I
are cured.  On another trip we may have better luck."

"We're not cured," said Maxwell, grimly.  "Our cases are arrested,
that's all.  The Tombovs do this twice a year, you know.  But we have
succeeded better than you know.  The proof of it is here."

He tapped the note book where he had noted the spectrum of the
platypus gaze.

"At home," he said, "we have a lot of kankilona eggs, and we know how
to activate them.  We can start in a properly humidified hothouse for
our first few batches.  After that we'll expand.  The world need
never know that what they're taking is a distillation of kankilona
poison.  They'll probably label it Nixijit, or something cute like
that."

"Oh, well," said Parks, irrelevantly, "I suppose the Congo Valley
won't be so bad."

"Nothing is ever as bad as it seems," said Maxwell.

A month later he made the same observation in a different form.  They
were on the homebound liner, and were among the few well enough to
sit up and enjoy the lounge.  A pest of a missionary came over and
dropped into a seat beside him.

"It's great to be getting back to God's footstool," he wheezed.
"What a cross I've had to bear working with those beastly Tombovs.
Ugh!  A race of brutes, steeped in the vilest superstitions and
practicing the most abominable rites.  Our own primitives had some
horrible customs, but the Tombov culture hasn't a single redeeming
feature."

"Oh," said Maxwell, screwing up one eye and smiling faintly, "I
wouldn't say _that_."



THE END.


[The end of _Lilies of Life_ by Malcolm Jameson]